Katie Milton Brkich et al., "The Rejection of the NGSS in Georgia: Social Covenants as Contextually Mitigating Factors," offers a compelling critical analysis that highlights how social-political influences, introduced as covenants, shape curricular decisions that may limit science literacy within the curricular landscape of science…

There has been sustained research interest in the role of early career researchers in advancing the field and the challenges that they face. However, efforts to document lived experiences of researchers working in a specific research area within science education have been scarce. This paper considers the meaning of innovation in the context of…

Approaching elective courses and courses on special topics in Chemistry can seem daunting at times, given the varied backgrounds of the students, together with the broad nature of topics. Often, institutions may give incentives for creating sustainability related course offerings, but knowing where to start and how to organize the information…

The emergence of the Family Resemblance Approach (FRA) to nature of science (NOS) has prompted a fresh wave of scholarship embracing this new approach in science education. The FRA provides an ambitious and practical vision for what NOS-enriched science content should aim for and promotes evidence-based practices in science education to support…

Although the age of the planet, the theory of biological evolution, and climate change are not "scientifically" controversial, students' familial and religious teachings can be perceived to be diametrically opposed to the science curriculum. However, there is a way for teachers to acknowledge alternative views and let students voice them…

The impact of polymeric materials on the well-being of citizens of the modern world is enormous. These materials enhance virtually every facet of life--from clothing and personal care items to housing and transportation. Yet despite this, and the fact that most chemists work in a polymer or polymer-related area, polymeric materials have…

We present a sequence of professional development sessions to support science teachers in designing socio-scientific inquiry-based learning (SSIBL) lessons to foster democratic citizenship. We focus on seven stages for enacting SSIBL: (1) introducing a dilemma; (2) initial opinion-forming; (3) creating a 'need to know'; (4) inquiry; (5) dialogue;…

The recent revision of undergraduate curricular guidelines from the American Chemical Society Committee on Professional Training (ACS-CPT) has generated interest in examining new ways of organizing course sequences both for chemistry majors and for nonmajors. A radical reconstruction of the foundation-level chemistry curriculum is presented in…

As a way to assist chemistry departments with programmatic assessment of undergraduate chemistry curricula, the ACS Examinations Institute is devising a map of the content taught throughout the undergraduate curriculum. The structure of the map is hierarchal, with large grain size at the top and more content detail as one moves "down"…

The Northern Ireland Primary Curriculum, formerly a highly prescribed, content-rich programme in which science was a discrete subject, was revised in 2007 and made statutory for all year groups by 2009. One of the most significant changes has been the amalgamation of science and technology with geography and history under a single area of learning…

Evolution offers an intellectually satisfying and extremely well-supported explanation for the diversity of life in the natural world, its similarities and differences, how changes occur and how new life forms have developed. There are plenty of reasons to anticipate the teaching of evolution with exhilaration. In recent years, the issue of…

As a discipline, chemistry enjoys a unique position. While many academic areas prepared "cooperative examinations" in the 1930s, only chemistry maintained the activity within what has become the ACS Examinations Institute. As a result, the long-term existence of community-built, norm-referenced, standardized exams provides a historical…

Readers of the draft new English primary science curriculum (DfE, 2012) might be concerned to see that there is much more detail on the Earth science content than previously in the United Kingdom. In this article, Chris King, a professor of Earth Science Education at Keele University and Director of the Earth Science Education Unit (ESEU),…

Evolution is the central unifying theme of biology. Yet today, more than a century and a half after Charles Darwin proposed the idea of evolution through natural selection, the topic is often relegated to a handful of chapters in textbooks and a few class sessions in introductory biology courses, if covered at all. In recent years, a movement has…

The fact that "The Next Generation Science Standards" ("NGSS") are standards and not curriculum (NRC 2012, p. xiv) means that while they tell teachers what to teach, they do not tell them "how" science shall be taught. Ana Houseal and Peter Ellsworth have worked with eight Wyoming school districts on the…